According to all appearances, the thin victory of Karol Nawrocki in the wafer in the presidential elections of Poland not only reflects the political schisms of a post -communist state. It is symptomatic of a deeper and more dangerous tide: the renewed increase in illiberal populism in Europe, echoing the nationalist impulses of Donald Trump’s America.
Calling Nawrocki “Trump of Poland” may seem simplistic, but it is not far from the brand. The conservative historian, once a local politician and now the president-elect, conducted a campaign directly in the style of Trump’s insurgent nationalism: “First Poland”, Anti-Eue, culturally conservative, suspicious of re-strugging and promoted by Vagoe. “” “That is a word that Trump has also exercised, as if pluralism, compassion and cooperation were a diversion of natural order.
What once seemed an abstract philosophical shock between the liberal legacy of the enlightenment and the growing tide of exclusive populism, in parts of Eastern Europe, it has become a very real, elitations, but or the institution. The battlefields are no longer just rhetoric; They are ballots, legislatures and public squares.
Trump, always the world animator of populist allies, did not waste the time he declared Nawrocki a “winner.” The support was not mere rhetoric. Nawrocki’s candidacy had been blessed in the White House and gave him an additional impulse by a CPAC summit in Warsaw, full of praise of the acolytes of Trump’s world. In many ways, Nawrocki’s success, Trump’s indirect claim is: a proof that the nationalist play book still works, equally outside the borders of the United States.
But despite all Mar-A-Lago applause, Nawrocki’s triumph is less a landslide and more a landslide. The mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzawski for a margin or 50.89% to 49.11%. This thin result of shaving is not a decisive populist victory. Rather, it reveals an almost perfectly divided society, divided between the liberal vision of Tusk of a democratic and pro -European Poland and right -wing by the National Sovereign of Brussels.
This is not exclusive to Poland. In Romania, the EU Liberal of the EU Dan Dan Dan closely triumphed over the Euroesthetic Pro-Maga George Simion, and only after the latter struck in his own mistakes. In Moldova, the re -election of Maia Sandu, similarly fragile, masking a deep ambivalence on EU membership, a referendum saw the proeuropel votes scrape beyond the 50%mark. Only in victory, liberalism is tired.
It is tempting to blame directly at the feet of the Russian interference, and to be safe, the digital footprints of the Kremlin are not difficult to find. But the failure of liberalism in Eastern Europe is not just a matter of hostile influence. It is also about internal disappointment. The promise of the West (democracy, prosperity, dignity) has hidden many who expected transformation after communism but only received corruption, inequality and stagnation.
In the heart of the populist increase is not simply the disappearance with the promises of liberalism, but a deeper and corrosive feeling: the advancement born or that it is told to emulate a supposedly higher model, only to be remembered, again and again, of the failure, of the failure of one, of the failure of one, of the failure of one, of the failure of one, or again. In its western incarnation, this complaint is taking a familiar form: a conviction that liberal democracy has become a patio of recreation for the elites, while the rest is dealing with the disorienting rotation of migration, economic tension and cultural drift.
What unites these complaints, Wheter in Warsaw or Wisconsin, is a disdain for complexity and commitment. Liberal democracy demands both. Populism, on the contrary, promises clarity through division: United States against them, native versus migrants, patriots versus globalists. It is an intoxicating potion, specialty when mixed with national mythology and economic anxiety.
From this light, Nawrocki’s victory feels less like a coincidence and more like the last tremor in a continental change. His power to veto the legislation now threatens to stop Donald Tusk’s attempts to reverse a decade of democratic erosion. Critical judicial reforms, necessary not only for the rule of law, but also for defrosting or € 137 billion in EU funds, can die on the Onwawocki desktop. Poland’s ambition to claim his liberal bearings could hesitate at the hands of a president who owes his position to a movement that considers European integration as betrayal.
It is not just the internal policy of Warsaw at stake. Nawrocki can tighten ties with Berlin and Paris, NATO’s muddy cohesion on Ukraine and sharpen the east-west crack inside the EU. It can oppose abortion and LGBTQ+ rights legislation and reinforce identity policy that seek to reduce democracy to majority.
Donald Trump, observing all this, probably sees a affirmation or his worldview. For him, the arc of history does not lean towards justice; It bends towards the complaint. His admiration for Nawrocki, as well as his joke with the Hungarians, Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico de Slovakia, is in his disdain shared by liberal pluralism and his ability to arm nationalism in a ruling creed.
But there is also resistance. The liberal camp can be mistreated, but it is not broken. In Romania, in Moldova, and also between half or the electorate of Poland, there are still beliefs in an open, democratic and fair Europe. Ukraine stands as the clearest proof that liberalism, although it is worth defending liberalism, although Flaedwed and Slow. The Ukrainians are not dying by empire, but for freedom, not return to authoritarianism in the Soviet style, but to take a step towards a liberal order that many in the West now take for granted.
The risk today is that liberal democracies, both in the United States and in Europe, are not renewed. That forget how to present the case of gradual improvement, commitment and dignity about shows and demagogy. That surrender to the false promise of “normality”: an euphemism for a past that never existed.
Karol Nawrocki’s victory, like Trump’s rise, is a warning. The populist wave has not retreated; He has simply remodeled his contours. It is possible that Europe is not sleepwalking towards illiberalism, but it is certainly flirting with it: open eyes, tight fists, unsolved past. And Donald Trump, from afar, is smiling.
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